Why Selfless Frontline Nurses Like Lini Puthussery Deserve Recognition Through The Year

Lini Puthussery was only 31 when she passed away in May of 2018. A nurse, she was at the frontline working relentlessly to save lives in Kerala. She was survived by a husband and two young children, all of whom she left before final goodbyes could be exchanged.

Only a parting letter endured.

"I don't think I will be able to see you again. Sorry. Please raise our children well," Puthussery wrote to her husband situated in the Gulf, a physically distant farewell.

That was the year India had no reason to even envisage any inklings of the coronavirus disaster that was soon to explode, for we were focused on containing the spread of another deadly virus. The Nipah outbreak, which largely remained constricted within southern India, reportedly claimed 17 lives. One of them was Puthussery, who contracted the virus tending to the first few patients.

From 2020, when COVID-19 first gripped India, up to 2021 when it refuses to relent, deaths have vastly superseded Nipah casualties. As opposed to the double-digit virus loss some years ago, the country's death toll now stands well over 2,50,000 - among the worst in the world. Some reports say it could well touch the million-mark by August this year.

In the event of hospitals turning warzones and wards turning graveyards, the medical fraternity is witnessing deaths up close more than anyone. Deaths both, of strangers and their own.

Numbers from the centre in February claimed that a total of 116 nurses and 174 doctors have died in India from the virus. However, more recent data from the Indian Medical Association (IMA) that places doctor deaths over 800 is indicative that central records may be severely undercounting nurse deaths.

A Need To Recognise, Respect, Revere Lini Puthuserrys Everywhere

The current pandemic is the heaviest burden India's, and sure enough the world's, health community has had to shoulder in recent times. By their own admission, they have never been faced with this magnitude of "horrors" before. So it's a given that our frontline workers aren't going to emerge out of it without battle scars that will emotionally, physically, mentally be permanent.

A haunting photo that went viral last month, of a nurse in PPE sneaking in a moment of respite from exhaustion between duty, is symbolic of the irreversible ravages this pandemic has inflicted on medical professionals.

Despite their mental health being in shambles and the mountain of accountability that ties them to nothing less than human life itself, our nurses are persisting with power. Last year, a delegation of nurses from India was deployed to the UAE to assist with healthcare. Duty called, they left. So it happened with Mumbai's mayor Kishori Pednekar too, who after 18 long years, donned her nurse armour to step into the battlefield.

This time around, as the virus strikes faster and deadlier, nurses are still standing tall, if not taller. Even with their own lives constantly at risk, they move about with bottomless reserves of smiles and comfort.

How are they being repaid? With underpayment, irreverence and trivialisation.

Our Nurses Deserve Applause, But Support Is What They Need

Through the pandemic, nurses have protested the lack of medical facility, protective gear, pay. In Delhi, they were compelled to go on strike over non-payment of salaries last year. This year too, similar agitations continue, such as in Mumbai where nurses at a COVID-19 hospital are highlighting the lack of proper housing and food.

Does celebrating nurses for one day, slotted as the International Nurses Day on the calendar every May 12, make up for the disregard they are subjected to the rest of the year? Do they need symbolic praise or real support? As health workers noted last year, applause is not what they are seeking.

Prominent cardiac surgeon Dr Devi Shetty ">notes that within the next 12 months India must plan for a third wave, that experts everywhere are saying may be an imminent reality. For that, he points out the need to scale up ICU beds to 500,000 at least, and to recruit 2,20,000 additional nurses and 150,000 doctors.

The existing healthcare workers are able soldiers, no doubt. But this combat needs more warriors. A world of challenges lies ahead of us, one that needs our medical fraternity to guide us through to the end of the tunnel.

Views expressed are the author's own.